Movie Palace Cozy Mystery Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Margaret Dumas

  If Hector was still in Columbia when Raul and Kate were murdered I could eliminate him as a suspect. Although crime lords were well-known for having henchmen, weren’t they? Think of Sydney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon. Think of Sydney Greenstreet in just about anything.

  But back to the point: Hector had found out that I was at my lawyer’s office on the day of the murders. I could try to find out where he was, too.

  Oh. Wait a minute. Hector had found out where I was. That meant he was investigating the murders. Why would he be investigating the murders if he’d committed them?

  This thought made my head hurt. I stopped on the sidewalk, not having any idea where I was. In the past week I’d only gone a few blocks in either direction from the Palace. Now I was on a bustling street of shops and restaurants, patronized by a hipster-looking clientele. A check of a street sign told me I was on Fillmore, but that meant nothing to me. I turned uphill and kept walking.

  Okay, putting Hector aside for a moment, what about Todd Randall? He’d been lying about who he was and why he’d been in contact with Kate. And he’d broken into the office in search of something.

  But all that still left me with the question of how he fit in. Why had he really been in contact with Kate? Because it certainly wasn’t for a film festival. How could he have found out what was going on between the Potent Flower and the Palace? How could he have known about the money? If Monica, Kate, and Raul were the only people who knew, where did Todd Randall come in?

  This would all be a lot easier if I knew who he actually was. I thought about texting Detective Jackson again, but decided that might be pushing my luck. Instead I tried Monica.

  Did Kate ever mention Todd Randall to you? Do you have any idea how she knew him?

  There was so little I knew about Kate herself. When I’d originally looked her up online I’d been surprised by how little information about her I’d found. Even Albert, who’d known her the longest, didn’t know anything about her life before the Palace. At one point I’d wondered if she might have been fleeing from some sort of criminal past or might even be in the witness protection program. Now all those thoughts combined to present another possibility. What if Todd was someone from Kate’s past? Could he have tracked her down somehow? Had he been blackmailing her over some secret?

  I shook my head, worried that I was just being a screenwriter and spinning out increasingly fantastic scenarios. What I needed were facts.

  I also needed a hot meal and a warm, safe space to keep thinking. I thought about summoning a ride share car to take me back to Robbie’s guest house, but with as much as Hector seemed to know about me, I was pretty sure he’d have found out that I was staying in an isolated house made largely of glass. Until I heard back from Detective Jackson I had no desire to see Hector again. Particularly alone, where nobody could hear me scream.

  Okay, now I was just freaking myself out. Nevertheless, I refused to be Barbara Stanwyck in Sorry, Wrong Number (1948, Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster) trapped and waiting for my killer to come find me. Instead I pulled out my phone and saw that I was five blocks away from a hotel with decent ratings. It was five blocks back in the direction of the Palace, so I turned left at the next street and set off toward comfort. And safety.

  I spent those five blocks thinking about the MacGuffin. Something valuable that could be hidden in plain sight. And Monica had said Kate didn’t want her looking at it differently every time she went past it. So it was in plain sight in a commonly used area.

  What small thing would I buy with seven million dollars? First I thought about jewels, and then I thought about gold. In its heyday, the interior of the Palace had been dripping with gold leaf. Not much remained, but there were still glints and glimmers in the carved woodwork, holdovers from past restorations, if not from the original grandeur. What if Kate had bought something like gold coins and just stuck them around here and there, high in the crown moldings or along the proscenium arch? Would they have blended right in? Would anyone have noticed?

  That hit all the criteria. Small, check. Valuable, check. Hidden in plain sight, check. And they might even be worth more by the time Kate sold them. Of course, they might also be worth less, but still.

  I started walking faster as I became more and more convinced I was on the right track. I’d grown to appreciate the way Kate’s mind had worked, the way she’d put movies together and the quirky tableaus she’d created in the theater to celebrate them. Did that mean I’d come to understand the way she’d thought? Had I tuned into her personality enough to figure out how she’d hidden the money? I asked myself whether decorating the theater with genuine gold would have appealed to her sensibilities, and the answer was a strong yes. I ran up the steps to the hotel when I got there.

  I couldn’t wait to talk to Robbie.

  Chapter 26

  “Where the hell have you been?!”

  “Robbie, I have so much to tell you!”

  I’d gotten a room at what turned out to be a very nice hotel and asked the guy who checked me in to have room service send up a pot of coffee and the biggest cheeseburger they were capable of producing. I hadn’t had anything except a cup of Marty’s tea all day and feeling like I’d finally figured something out had made me ravenous.

  “Where are you?” Robbie demanded. “I’ve been texting you for hours!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m in a hotel not far from the theater. And I’m fine. I’m wearing a fluffy white robe and hotel slippers and everything.”

  “How could you just run off like that? We’re in the middle of talking about organized crime and murders and you just say ‘gotta go’ and bail? What were you thinking?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said again, and I meant it. Robbie sounded truly upset and I hadn’t meant for her to worry. “I just suddenly realized something, and I had to check it out before I told you and Naveen about it. I had to be sure I was right.”

  “I’m texting Naveen right now,” she said. “We’ve been debating calling the cops all afternoon.” I heard her start tapping.

  “Sorry,” I said again. “But tell Naveen he doesn’t need to start any investigation of the other owners. I know who Kate was laundering the money for.”

  The tapping stopped. “What? How? Who?”

  So I told her everything, and finished just as the cheeseburger arrived.

  “So my first instinct was to run back to the theater immediately and start shimmying up ladders to look at anything gold,” I told Robbie between bites. “But we’re smack in the middle of the 6:50 show, so I figure I’ll wait here until after everyone goes home. If I go back after midnight I should have the place to myself.”

  “You will do no such thing!” Robbie said. “Have you forgotten what happened the last time you went into the theater alone? When Todd Randall—”

  “Well, sure, I know,” I said. “But we changed the alarm and fixed the lock, so—”

  “Nora Paige!” she yelled. “I forbid you to go back to the theater tonight!”

  I stared at the phone. “You forbid me?”

  “Yes. I just realized you work for me. So I forbid you to take any more stupid risks. Go check out the gold tomorrow, in full daylight, with the whole staff of the theater and the entire San Francisco police department with you. But do not even think of skulking around with a flashlight by yourself in the middle of the night!”

  “Okay, okay, calm down.” She made a good point. Not about being my boss, but about the flashlight. I’d see much more if I could turn the house lights all the way up, and if I did that tonight it would alert the presumably watchful Hector that I was up to something. And alone in a big empty theater. “You’re right,” I told her. “Tomorrow will be better. Just because I figured it out doesn’t mean Hector has. Or Randall.”

  “Just because you think you figured it out,” she said. “You may not even be right. Because, one, the ki
ller may already have the MacGuffin, and two, if it’s still in the Palace it might not be in the form of gold coins glued to the rafters.”

  Well, when she put it like that…“What do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe gold coins glued to the rafters, but maybe literally anything else. Listen,” she went on, “I want you to promise me you’ll wait until tomorrow. Seriously, Nora.”

  Ugh. As much as it killed me to admit it, the smart thing to do was to wait. “Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten a whole pot of coffee from room service,” I said.

  “Girl, you pour that down the drain right now,” she advised. “And see if there’s wine in the minibar. Then get a good night’s sleep and don’t go in tomorrow until other people are there. Promise.”

  I promised. I didn’t like it, but I promised.

  I checked out of the hotel in the morning and was waiting outside the True Value hardware store on Divisadero when it opened at ten. I’d located the store on my phone, and the guy who unlocked the door seemed unfazed when I asked him for flashlights, binoculars, and acetone nail polish remover. Maybe it wouldn’t be his weirdest request of the day.

  It was Friday, which meant the movie lineup would change and the first show would be at 11:30. I figured everyone working the early shift would be in about an hour before that. I breezed past the ticket booth and up the poster-lined entryway at exactly 10:35, pleased to see two things: the lobby door was locked and Brandon was behind the candy counter.

  “Hey Nora,” he said as I used my keys—Kate’s keys—at the door. “Everybody’s been looking for you. Are you okay?”

  “Everybody who?” I asked, more sharply than I’d intended if his startled reaction was anything to go by. I just hoped “everybody” didn’t include either of my prime suspects.

  “Um, Callie and Marty and Albert?” he said, turning his signature shade of splotchy crimson. “They’re all upstairs.”

  “Oh, good. Yes, I’m fine, but I need your help with something before the first show. Can you go find the tall ladder?”

  “Sure,” he said, not sounding sure at all. “Um, should I tell everyone you’re here?”

  “Yes,” I put the hardware store bag on the counter. “I got enough flashlights for all of us.”

  Searching for the hidden gold took a little longer than I’d planned, mainly because I had to spend some time convincing everyone that I was A: just fine despite having vanished without a word the day before, and B: not clinically insane for thinking there was gold in the rafters.

  I didn’t think anyone had to know that Kate had been laundering Monica’s cash. They only needed to know that someone had killed her for something valuable.

  “Look,” I explained to everyone as they assembled and sat (Albert) stood (Callie and Brandon) or glared (Marty) in the balcony. “We know Todd Randall came here looking for something. He said it was something she bought with his money.”

  Albert harrumphed.

  “I don’t believe that either,” I told him. “But I’ve found out that Kate had bought something valuable recently, and it was something small that she hid in plain sight in the theater.”

  I was assaulted with questions from all sides and I held my hands up in protest. “Later—I promise I’ll explain everything later, but right now we have just about half an hour to start looking for anything that glimmers with these.” I passed out the flashlights and binoculars. The house lights were all the way up, but we could use all the help we could get.

  “If you think you see something, we’ll go up on the ladder for a closer look,” I told them. “And if it really is something, and it’s glued to the woodwork, we can use nail polish remover to dissolve the glue without hurting the gold.” I’d spent quite a while thinking through the details of the operation before I’d finally fallen asleep at the hotel.

  Everyone was staring at me as if they weren’t quite sure whether I’d lost my mind. I couldn’t really afford to care about that now.

  “Go!” I yelled at them. “Look!”

  So they did.

  And we found nothing.

  “So when you said there were gold coins glued to the woodwork, what you meant was there was something somewhere in the theater,” Marty said. “Which we already established yesterday.”

  “It could be anything,” Callie said.

  “Anywhere,” Brandon concluded.

  “That is, unless the killer already has it,” Albert reminded us.

  We were in the break room gathered despondently around the table. The 11:30 showing of Dial M for Murder was underway, and I’d called Claire and Mike to come in and help out so the rest of us could talk. My staff was less than thrilled with me. I was less than thrilled with myself.

  “Okay. Well. I apologize,” I said. “I may have gone a little bit down a rabbit hole with the gold idea.” And with thinking I could read Kate’s mind.

  “It was a good idea,” Albert said comfortingly.

  “Sure,” Marty said. “A great idea. Based on absolutely nothing.”

  I couldn’t actually dispute that, so I didn’t. The truth was I’d gotten completely carried away with one possibility when there were a thousand others.

  “Okay, so, can someone explain why Kate had something so valuable that somebody, like, killed her over it?” Callie asked.

  I’d decided what to tell them when I’d thought everything through at the hotel the night before. Kate had wanted to shield them and the theater from any hint of criminal conspiracy. So did I.

  “She’d been saving money,” I now said. “With the goal of remodeling the Palace. That’s why she hadn’t been keeping up with the routine repairs. But then she invested the money in something. Something small that she hid in plain sight. Something that she thought would be worth more when she sold it than it was when she bought it.”

  Marty, who had been lounging dejectedly, now stirred with interest. “How much money are we talking about?”

  There was no way in the world they’d believe Kate had saved anything like seven million dollars. So I glossed over that, too.

  “Enough to start a remodel of the building, so probably quite a bit.”

  “As much as that monstrosity of a projector that’s taking up room in my booth?” Marty asked pointedly.

  “I thought about that, and it is in plain sight, but really only your plain sight. No, the projector is valuable, but I don’t think it’s the MacGuffin.” Nor was it worth seven million, I didn’t add.

  Albert smiled at my use of the term. “I always did fancy myself as Sam Spade.” He rubbed his hands together with relish. “Let’s figure this out, shall we? Something small and valuable, hidden in plain sight.”

  “You all knew Kate,” I said. “You know how she thought.” Which apparently I didn’t. “What do you think she would have done?”

  “What’s been done in the movies?” Brandon asked. “Kate knew everything about movies.”

  “And she loved a good caper film,” Albert agreed.

  “What was that one where they melt down stolen gold into, like, souvenirs of the Eiffel Tower?” Callie asked.

  “The Lavender Hill Mob,” Marty and I said in unison (1951, Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway). I gave Marty a glance that recognized a kindred spirit. He just looked startled that I’d known the film.

  “I love the idea of looking to the movies for clues,” I said. “What are some other capers Kate liked? Anything you showed recently?”

  “I don’t know about recently, but there’s always Topkapi,” Albert said (1964, Peter Ustinov and Melina Mercouri). “But that’s all about stealing the dagger, isn’t it? Not hiding it somewhere.”

  “How to Steal A Million?” Brandon contributed (1966, Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole).

  “Again, that’s about stealing the statue, not hiding it,” Marty said dismissively.
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  “But it’s a good thought,” Albert patted Brandon’s arm.

  We considered and rejected The Asphalt Jungle (1950, Sterling Hayden and a glimpse of Marilyn Monroe), To Catch a Thief (1955, Cary Grant and Grace Kelly), and The Ladykillers (1955, Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers) before Callie jumped to her feet.

  “Oh. My. God,” she said, her eyes wide. “Omygod, omygod, omygod!” She turned to me. “Family Plot!”

  It took just a moment until I was with her. Family Plot (1979, Karen Black and Bruce Dern) was Alfred Hitchcock’s last film. It involves a sham psychic and kidnappers, and in the last scene of the film the camera pans to a chandelier where we see an enormous diamond hidden among the crystals. The MacGuffin. Hidden in plain sight.

  “The chandelier!” We tumbled all over each other rushing out of the room to the top of the balcony stairs. From that vantage point, we could see directly across the lobby to the hundred sparkling facets of the glittering chandelier.

  Blog Post: How To Steal A Million

  1966

  Oh, how I love a caper movie! And this has to be the prettiest one ever made, with Audrey Hepburn as Nicole Bonnet, Peter O’Toole as Simon Dermott, a wardrobe by Givenchy, jewels by Cartier (yes, the jewels get a screen credit—it’s that kind of movie) multiple tiny convertibles, and Paris, Paris, Paris! It’s fun, gorgeous, and sophisticated, three words that also describe Audrey Hepburn.

  Audrey is everything you want from her here. OMG, the white bubble hat, the white sunglasses, the little white dress and the tiny red convertible that she’s tooling around Paris in the first time we see her—you will die. And don’t even get me started on the black lace outfit she wears to meet Peter O’Toole clandestinely in the Ritz bar. A black lace dress with black lace tights and, I swear to you, a black lace mask barely obscuring amazing silver glitter eye makeup. I may pass out from fashion overload. Did I mention the clusters of diamonds at her ears? Cartier clusters, people.